


Periphery

by sannlykke



Series: SASO 2017 [7]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Psychological Horror, Ringu, Supernatural Elements, implied/past nijimayu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 08:57:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11249847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sannlykke/pseuds/sannlykke
Summary: Mayuzumi, per the request of a friend, looks into a strange video on the Internet.





	Periphery

**Author's Note:**

> for [this](http://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/22249.html?thread=11961321#cmt11961321) br2 prompt card. this will make more sense if you've seen the movie (ringu or the ring, either one).
> 
> PLEASE read the tags before proceeding!

1.  
  
Maybe it was a mistake doing this, but well, he can’t do anything about that now. The video won’t disappear now that he has it sitting in a folder—he stares at the screen, the heat beneath his fingers never reaching his skin. Even considering his skills the video had been a bitch to find, hidden beneath layers and layers of encryption in a corner of the Internet he’d never even known existed.  
  
(How had the kids found this then? He tries not to think about it as he double-clicks the file.)  
  
The video fizzles into life, filling his screen. At first, he sees nothing.  
  
(It’s so quiet, he realizes too late. _So quiet._ )

 

  
2.  
  
“How many times have I said you shouldn’t do this kind of shit alone? Look—”  
  
“Shut up,” Mayuzumi says, though even he can hear the tremble in his own voice and the whiteness of his knuckles. For a few moments the other side of the line is silent. “You don’t—you don’t know what it was like. You shouldn’t get into this.”  
  
“Mayu—“  
  
He throws the phone across his room, unable to look at it anymore.

  
  
3.  
  
_He has such pretty red hair._  
  
Mayuzumi stares at the screen, entranced, at the young man—the milky paleness of his wrists as he brushes his hair with excruciating languidness. In the mirror his mismatched eyes almost seem to glow, and the slow smile that expands across his face at once inviting and hollow.  
  
_Come to me,_ the words float to the forefront of Mayuzumi’s mind, threatening to break through his skull, tear his skin apart in a flurry of blood and memories. He shuts the laptop so violently he’s almost sure he heard something broke.  
  
_He has such pretty red eyes._  
  
(That night, he tries to forget the video was once in grainy black-and-white.)

  
  
4.  
  
As selfish as he is, as much as he tries to shut himself off, it’s not like Mayuzumi wanted any of his friends— _is that what you think of them now, only after they’re sitting on death row with you?_ —to have gotten caught up in any of this.  
  
_“Why did you do that?”_ He remembers saying. _You still have a family to go back to_ dies in his throat as soon as he remembers, through the hysterics playing out in his mind, why both of them are here.  
  
Nijimura had looked up from his laptop, pulling out Mayuzumi’s flash drive and placing it back on the desk. There is no color in his face, and it suits him even less than it suits Mayuzumi.  
  
“I was the one who asked you to look into it, remember?”

 

5.  
  
The yellowing photograph of Akashi Shiori stares at them serenely from across time and space, her long hair spilling across her shoulders, reaching the ornate sash around her waist. Sharing the news spread is a photograph of Mount Asama, its smoking top obscured by the volcanic discharge.  
  
Her eyes are gentle, but Mayuzumi see something else in her face, an echo of the man in the video. He blinks, and her pupils sharpen.  
  
“Hey, you okay?”  
  
Mayuzumi shakes his head, and the photograph is back to normal. “Yeah, I…it’s nothing.”  
  
“A psychic…” Nijimura murmurs, his voice too loud in Mayuzumi’s ears, in the confines of the tiny library. Someone’s hands are shaking—not just his. He closes a hand over Nijimura’s as they look on, listening to the distant waves outside.  
  
Psychic or not, they’ve come too far now.

  
  
6.  
  
_“They were afraid of me,”_ Akashi says. _I didn’t want to hurt anyone._  
  
_So why?_  
  
Mayuzumi reaches out only to find himself trapped, on the wrong side of the mirror. He watches Akashi walk towards him, sit, reach for the brush lying on the tatami.  
  
_When my father found out what I could do, his men took me in the middle of the night._  
  
He starts to brush his hair, long and scarlet, much longer now than Mayuzumi remembered it being.  
  
_There were so many of them. I didn’t know where they were taking me, at first, but when I saw the well, I knew._  
  
“Why couldn’t you kill them?” Mayuzumi whispers, but the moment the words leave his mouth he already knows the answer. Akashi smiles at him, forlorn, picking out the hairs in his brush.  
  
_I was thirteen._  
  
_Thirteen._  
  
_Why did they do that to me?_  
  
He suddenly looks into Mayuzumi’s eyes, two flashes of red— _no, something else._ Mayuzumi could only watch with growing discomfort as Akashi’s eyes grow helpless, then defiant, then—  
  
_Why?_  
  


_Why?_

  
  


_Why?_

  
  
The brush handle splinters, piercing the palm of his hand, driving blood into the mats. Mayuzumi feels his breath catch, his throat tighten, as he falls forward through the cracks of the mirror, feeling nothing.  
  
Akashi looks down at him, leaning forward to tip Mayuzumi’s face towards him. There is something desperate about the way his voice tightens when he asks, again. “Do you know? Do you know how long I lived down there?”  
  
_It was only last year when I..._  
  
“It was wrong,” Mayuzumi says. He sees the tabloid headlines now from fifteen years ago, unsure if they are there because of his mind, or Akashi: _Rumors drive family matriarch to suicide_ , _Heir of Akashi Corp. disappears, mansion burns down_ , _A family cursed with fame and fortune?_ “You didn’t do anything wrong.”  
  
Akashi’s nails scrape against his skin as he lets Mayuzumi go, leaving a trail of wet blood across his chin. This is a dream: he knows this, objectively.  
  
“You will help me, won’t you?” Akashi murmurs, his breath hot against Mayuzumi’s ear. His fingers brush against Mayuzumi’s face, and a shudder, not entirely of fear, runs up the length of his spine. “You’ve already done it once. Do it again.”  
  
Mayuzumi wants to reach out, rip the tongue out of that mouth, but he does nothing but hold his breath.

  
  
7.  
  
When they find the skull in the well with barely minutes to spare, Mayuzumi finally feels like breathing again.

  
  
8.  
  
“This must be a mistake.”  
  
The man on the other end of the line sighs. Mayuzumi could hear the distinct sounds of furniture moving about, a roll of tape being pulled in the background. “I know this must be difficult, Mayuzumi-san, but you must understand—“  
  
“Heart attacks do _not_ run in his family!” Mayuzumi almost screams into the phone, his voice ragged and out of breath as he sits down, slowly, on his bed. “I…I want to see his body. I want to make sure.”  
  
_Listen:_ the man’s voice grows distant, almost afraid. “I don’t think that would be be a good idea.”  
  
When Mayuzumi breaks his second phone of the week, he catches a glimpse of something red in the reflection of his laptop.  
  
_You’ve already done it once._  
  
And then he knows.

  
  
9.  
  
_Why?_  
  
Mayuzumi sits in front of the glowing screen at midnight, fingers hovering over the keyboard.  
  
_Why not?_  
  
Akashi sits across from him, on the edge of the old well, across millions of lines of binary code. Mayuzumi could close the laptop, throw it out the window, burn it to plastic ash, but it would not change a single thing about the situation. Akashi knows this, and knows the feeling other than fear pooling at the pit of his stomach.  
  
_Don’t you want me?_  
  
_I want…_  
  
Mayuzumi looks at the title on his screen: _The 30-Year Old Mystery of the Akashi Family Finally Revealed!_  
  
_It’s been lonely in here. Don’t you think so? Don’t you think that’s wrong?_  
  
He mouses over to _Publish_ , on the NHK YouTube channel.  
  
_Good,_ Akashi purrs, and there it is again: the chill in his back. The mouse is slippery under his hands as he shuts the laptop the moment it finishes running, throwing it aside.  
  
The clattering of metal echoes through the room, but Akashi is still there, in the mirror across his bed.  
  
He reaches out for Mayuzumi, but Mayuzumi cannot tell what it is in the mirror anymore.  
  
_Come with me._

  
  
10.  
  
This time, Mayuzumi feels the glass slide beneath his skin as he slips through the cracks for the last time.


End file.
